


--the bitter & sweet taste (regret & desire mixed) of that impossibility

by ultraviolence



Category: Fate/Apocrypha, Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Fate/stay night - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cock Worship, Dirty Talk, Flirting, Forbidden Romance, Incest, Kissing, Light Bondage, M/M, Marking, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Power Dynamics, Royalty, Secret Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 10:36:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13679979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultraviolence/pseuds/ultraviolence
Summary: Arjuna sneaks in to visit Karna in his private chambers in the after hours.Importantthings happened. Set when they were still alive and not yet Heroic Spirits. Plot what plot? Happy Valentine's Day!





	--the bitter & sweet taste (regret & desire mixed) of that impossibility

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! ...I only know the Mahabhrata (aka the original canon) from secondary sources and a very abridged version at that, so if I made any mistake I apologise. Very long title from [this](http://violentwavesofemotion.tumblr.com/post/170687098862/i-touch-your-secret-with-my-body-i-touch-your) quote.
> 
> Enjoy!

The night was quiet, darkness kept at bay with torches at strategic points along the hallway, moonlight lancing through the windows, the light and shadow dancing their quiet, eternal dance. Karna was heading up the stairway towards his private chambers, the evening disappearing somewhere along the way, making way for a silken, quiet night. The guards saluted him as he made his way into the hallway leading towards his chambers, and there, he found his surprise. 

“Still surprised?” Arjuna said, stepping from the shadows, clad in moonlight that frames him like a moth, or a figure from a dream long forgotten, and the whites he wore emphasised that—and their difference in colouring. The window was open behind him, and a light breeze ruffled both of their hairs gently, like a mother’s caress. There was no question of how Arjuna managed to get in. They are demigods, ones who walked between the lands of reality and the shadowy hinterlands of myths, and they have their ways.

“Quite a night you have chosen,” Karna remarked, nonchalant, raising an eyebrow. Arjuna stepped closer.

“Ah, but it is a _night_ , nonetheless,” the younger man said, and he closes the space between them, his lips soft yet insistent on Karna’s lips. “You missed me,” he continued, and it’s no question that _he_ missed Karna. Arjuna was never the one to express his feelings towards intimacy directly. Karna doesn’t know how to address them. They made quite a pair, and it leads to problems more often than not, but for the most part, they enjoyed each other’s company—more than they should have. Arjuna doesn’t want to call it a tryst, for it implies mutual love and respect between them and acknowledgement of it, but Karna knows their relationship for what it truly is, yet he kept quiet about it. 

“Mm,” he merely hummed in response, distracted by the familiar taste of Arjuna’s lips on his, his arms instinctively wrapped around him, pulling him closer. “That why I’ve had the pleasure of your visit tonight, great prince of the Pandavas?”

Arjuna narrowed his eyes for a moment—moody being that he was—but his expression quickly turned into something more neutral, although Karna surprised him with a kiss, biting his bottom lip hard enough to elicit a needy moan from Arjuna. “That,” Arjuna agreed, for once, his hands already tracing the lines of Karna’s chest, fingers brushing the gem in the middle of it, “and other things. You know I can please you in different ways, o great king,” he says, pulling back to smile wickedly. “Should we go to your bed? I want to play with you tonight.”

“Just a little bit more,” Karna said, tracing his lips with his tongue, fingertips caressing Arjuna’s thigh, “it’s been a while.”

“Ah, but we have all night,” Arjuna teased back, this time biting Karna’s lips, his hands already reaching, teasingly, between Karna’s legs. 

Karna sighed. Arjuna always had his way, although Karna gave it to him willingly. He let Arjuna’s lips find his neck, as always, tasting him, taking him, and he let out a moan, his hands finding the other’s cock and started stroking it. “If you insist, your highness,” he told him, and Arjuna pulled back to give him a brilliant smile.

“Then come to bed,” he commanded, tilting Karna’s chin up to force him to look at him, and kissed him lightly. “Tonight, we shall have fun.”

Karna smiled, lazily, feeling the other man trying to resist his touch but leaning to it nonetheless, slowly growing hard in his hands, under the light trousers he’s wearing. He could have turned the table, but he didn’t. “Yes, of course,” he pulled Arjuna to him and kissed him hard, passionately, before pushing him away just as drastically. Then he bowed, lightly, a mock bow, gesturing towards his chambers. “After you, my prince.”

* * *

They tumbled into Karna's bed, one after the other, couldn’t stay away from each other for too long, even if tomorrow beckons, even if the shadow of their family’s rivalry hung between them like a spectre from their nightmares, from their own personal hell. Karna missed this, _hungry_ for this, feeling Arjuna writhing on top of him, his hard-on pressed against Karna’s thigh, his lips on Karna’s neck, hands pinning his down beside his head. It was all a game for Arjuna, he knows, who had everything and lack for nothing in his life except for what’s really worth it, but Karna has never let it bother him in the slightest. They both are fated for each other, and they both have their own sins and demons to contend with.

“Don’t move your hands,” Arjuna breathed, and there was a tenderness in his dark eyes that made Karna catch his breath. “Do you trust me, Karna?”

“—I do, Juna,” Karna said, whispering a smile into his voice and lips.

Arjuna smiled a smile of his own, edged like the moon, but there was an unmistakable fondness in his eyes. “What a strange thing to say,” he said, pulling back to reveal a silk rope in his hands. “For a Kaurava.”

Karna raised an eyebrow, but said nothing about it. “Don’t you think all of this is strange?” he said, feeling Arjuna kissed him softly in the lips even as he angles Karna’s hands above his head, and started binding it with the silk rope, lightly, ever so lightly, but Karna felt tied to him more than ever, not only their fates and their bodies but also their souls, intertwined. “You. Me. _Us_.”

There was a slight pause from Arjuna, as he finished tying Karna’s hands, both of their tunics has already gone from their foreplay earlier. “You are stranger still, my king,” he said, his lips kissed Karna’s before slowly moving down to his jawline, whispering against his skin, “you are now a king and a prince. Yet you still enjoyed being a slave, and think like one,” Arjuna said, his lips pressing against Karna’s neck, making his way to his collarbone, and Karna tried to suppress his moans, “don’t _you_ think that’s strange?”

“Only to you,” Karna whispered, shifting his bound wrists and tried pulling the other closer, as if any distance between them is too much. “And besides, I am _your_ slave.”

Arjuna scoffed, lightly, but Karna could feel his true emotion radiating from him. There was a smugness to his smile, a victorious triumph, and he pins Karna’s wrists, his tongue licking Karna’s collarbone, down to the gem in the midst of his chest that was proof of his divinity. “I liked how you tasted, slave,” Arjuna said, one hand pinning Karna’s tied-up wrists, the other beside his head, coaxing needy moans from the older man with his tongue. “I could lick you forever.”

Karna tried to smile sardonically at that, but Arjuna has reached his abdomen and he let out a deep moan, writhing lightly underneath him. “Well, I could say you’re good with your tongue,”

“And you almost come, already,” Arjuna said, licking Karna’s sweat, his hand reaching for his hard cock, giving it a light squeeze. “So soon, great hero?”

“As I said,” Karna manages, instinctively struggling against Arjuna’s grip, “only for you, my prince…my master.”

“What a sentiment,” Arjuna looks up, grinning. “Let me worship your cock.”

“Yes,” Karna sighed, feeling Arjuna’s tongue on his cock, licking the precome that has gathered on the head of his cock. “Please…”

Arjuna’s tongue licked the head of his cock, slowly, for his own satisfaction, clearly enjoying the moans that he elicited from Karna’s mouth and the way he arched his back in his direction, before taking his cock into his mouth and started sucking it, now more insistently, hands pinning Karna by the hips.

“D- don’t stop, Juna,” Karna said, feeling the sweat forming on his brow, biting his bottom lip. He felt hot, impatient, although a part of him don’t want this to be over just yet. But he had started feeling light-headed, struggling against his bonds. “ _Please_.”

Karna could feel Arjuna's teeth on his cock, lightly, and he groaned, struggling, but Arjuna’s mouth—and his tongue—was persistent, a force to be reckoned with, coaxing him, and soon enough, he felt the familiar pressure building, and, before he could caught himself, he came in Arjuna’s mouth, shivering, his brother’s name on his tongue. Arjuna pulled back, gently, swallowing his cum, licking his lips in obvious pleasure, their breathing equally ragged. Karna’s gaze immediately went to Arjuna’s hard-on. 

He felt Arjuna’s lips kissing his cheek, gentler this time. “Let me help you,” Karna said, and the other man nodded, fingertips already untying Karna’s silken bonds. “How would you like it, my prince?”

Arjuna grins, already guiding Karna’s freed hands towards his cock. “Like this,” he said, and Karna obeyed him, “now it’s your turn to worship me.”

Karna kissed him by the neck, let his teeth sink in. It was his turn now, and unlike Arjuna, he sucked down deep enough after that to leave a mark, hard enough to make Arjuna moan and want him all the more. This isn’t their first time, it wasn’t hard to guess that his younger half-brother was now feeling very impatient, to say at the very least.

“It’s my pleasure,” Karna told him, fingertips caressing Arjuna’s cock. “Brother.”

Arjuna groaned, half in pleasure, but a light of annoyance danced in his dark eyes. “When you call me that…I don’t like it. I am not your brother, Karna,”

“You can deny it all you want,” Karna said in return, pushing him down underneath him, feeling triumphant but kept his expression neutral, even as he stroke Arjuna’s cock and the other man started grinding it on his hands, leaning towards his touch as naturally and as trusting as a sunflower towards the sun, with an obvious impertinence that characterised him, even when they sparred for their lives in the battlefield. “But you know it to be the truth,”

“Y- you can say that all you want,” Arjuna tried to retort, punctuated with a loud, desperate moan, rubbing hard against Karna’s fingertips, and Karna held him, left other marks on Arjuna’s neck, this time somewhere less hidden, and he pulled back slightly for a moment to admire his handiwork. Arjuna looked beautiful like that, with his face flushed with embarrassment and want, and angry red marks blooming on his neck. “But that doesn’t make it true.”

He might as well say that Karna’s throne was made of lies, and Karna knows Arjuna believed it to be true—and _he_ knows that it’s true, as well, although he believed his cause was righteous—but in the heat of the moment, everything is lost, and there are only them, not demigods, not princes from opposing families, not fated rivals. Arjuna came with a desperate, hard moan, in Karna’s hands, and Karna smiled.

—In the aftermath, Arjuna scowled. “I’m not staying,” he said, brusquely, although he let Karna held him for a bit, and it was easy to tell that he was stalling. “You’re familiar with how this works by now,”

“Yes,” Karna said, letting him go, but didn’t feel disappointment, nor resignation or resentment. He had long accepted that this is all they are going to be—rivals by daylight, something approaching lovers by moonlight. Their families—even if his is an adopted one—wouldn’t allow it. Arjuna won’t look him in the eyes, as he pick up his clothes one by one on the floor. Karna didn’t say anything else. Soon enough, his younger brother was fully dressed, and Karna could envision the moonlight, once more, shining behind him, the night so untouched and forgotten. 

“Goodbye,” Arjuna said, as if it was the last time, hovering uncertainly for a moment, wanting to say something that he couldn’t spit out, “brother,” he whispered, before disappearing out of the door. 

Karna didn’t say goodbye, because he knows they’re going to meet again, sooner or later, fated as they were. He opened his window, slightly, and the moonlight stays, long after Arjuna was gone and he fell asleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Next week I'll hopefully be bringing the third part of their Magi AU, so until then. Thanks for reading! As always, comments & suggestions are more than welcome, hmu at twitter: @raginghel <3


End file.
